Cleaning Up the Rack

I finally got my first rack in today. Gator 4u rack case (there will be a second one in the future for EQ and eventually pre's.) It's nice finally having my equipment in its proper place. The problem is, its a bloody mess inside that thing! I'm working on organizing it so there's not a heap of senseless cabling.

1)Power cables: I got a Furman M8x2. But there's still 3 miles of power cable inside the case. Are there any sources for custom length power cables? I hate spanning 10" distances with 5' cables.

2) XLR Cables: I know I can make custom length XLR's for my balanced I/O's. On the other hand reaching around inside the case is a pain. I noticed that there are some XLR feedthrough panels. I'm looking for a pannel that I can use for 4 channels with one XLR in and out feedthrough for each channel. This way when I mobilize I can spend my time engineering and recording rather than wiring. Do any companies sell, or does anyone make such feedthroughs?

3) A Stand: Ok, so it has nothing to do with cleaning up the inside of the rack, but I'd like to be able to get it off the floor with some sort of portable stand. Does anyone know if you can use a piano stand to set a rack on? I was thinking one of these.

1. Cut to proper length and use these to put them back togeather Pro Tools 10 System Requirements (don't know the english word for these) or you can probably by new ones from a local music shop. Here across the sea we have Thomann, you guys probably got something similar.
2. don't know
3. If its narrow enough when it's set at its highest, if not you can always use a piece of plywood on top to get a table

The IEC cables from various suppliers are so cheap that it's hard to justify wiring your own for a 4U rack.

In item 2 it seems that you are talking about a patch bay. In any case, my (relatively) cheap, easy, resellable solution is to buy a few snakes. (No boxes - fan to fan.) I have an 8 channel, a four channel and a couple of 2 channel snakes. Long enough to go from the back of my desk to most anywhere in my room (at least when connected to another cable to the mic.) I have labeled the female ends, so it is easy to access all of my preamps from the middle of the room. If you have four channels, a four channel snake will take care of present needs and will be very handy if you expand.

The item Nutti is referring to, we would call a Euro-terminal strip - if that's what you want, they have them at Radio Shack.

Item #2: For a true XLR feedthru - you might want something like this feedthru at Redco. It has a Panel Mount Female you can mount on the front of your rack that goes out to a XLR Male on the back. Redco has the pre-punched rack panels too. [make sure you get the panels punched for the specific brand of connectors you intend to use - the hole sizes and bolt-patterns aren't exactly the same on a Switchcraft as they are on a Neutrik D]

Item #3: When I want to use a keyboard stand to hold up a rack or speaker I take a lid from a 12-space rack flip it and make a 20" x 22" tabletop out of it. It fits my keyboard stands perfectly and the lip facing downward on the lids keeps them from wanting to slide off the stands beautifully.

1) Those little 1ft cables that dvdhawk mentioned are perfect for the price. SOLVED

2) After someone mentioned patchbay (don't know why that word didn't click when I was searching origionally I found this: Hosa PDR-369. It's about $30 more expensive than the 8 channel I'd build for myself, but it allows me to flip the feedthrough's if I'm reading correctly. That's worth it to me (no making special f/f xlr's for return signals.) Are there any major signal pitfals with such a product that I'm unaware of?

3) I hadn't thought of using something like that to restrain movement/solidify the keyboard stand. I may look into some heavy duty nylon straps for a lightweight alternative (no rack covers myself, actually that's not true, its just that they cover a 4u rack lol.)

Everybody, once more thanks for all your help. I wasn't pulling up anything useful in my searches. Ya'll are great!